2010 March

Last weekend I had the good fortune to hear an excellent sermon based on Paul’s letter to the Galatian church. Galatians is one of my favorite books because it is all about living the Christian life by means of the Holy Spirit. As a former “fundamentalist” I am an expert on living life by means of rules and regulations, and I am profoundly aware of the spiritual death that results. The sinner and church reconciliation was a frequent topic of discussion, not to say debate, in those circles. Hang on for some difficult but hard news!

The preacher began his review by discussing Paul’s first admonition in chapter 6: “Brethren, if anyone is caught in any sin, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted.” We are aware that Paul is speaking of Christians who are “caught…in…sin” because he urges that they be restored, and Paul would not have considered non-Christians to have anything to be restored to.

A flash from my past. This passage reminded me of an occasion at which I was a speaker at a church conference in a small island nation in the South Pacific. Some Christians at the conference had accused another Christian of committing a sin. The “sinner” did not admit wrongdoing and the dispute was elevated to the conference leadership. They were inclined to bring the matter to a close as quickly as possible by immediately giving the accused an ultimatum: confess that you have sinned or be banished from the church. The accused and a small number of supporters appealed to me to determine whether there could be church reconciliation. The leaders responded by pointing out that I had no authority in the church and themselves appealed to Scripture: Matthew 18:15-17. Nonetheless, they asked me for my opinion. I responded by asking them what attempts had been made to restore the person, pointed out Galatians 6:1 and reminded them that, even in the Matthew passage, excommunication was a last resort in the process of restoration. They eventually retreated into their authority, banished the accused, and made sure that no one else asked me what I thought about it. My point in relating this story is not to criticize the outcome of that particular confrontation. I merely want to reinforce the idea that the biblical guidelines governing church reconciliation of a sinning Christian are not about anger, self-righteousness, fear or power, they are about restoration.

Three noteworthy principles. The reason that confronting the sinner among Christians is so hard is that everything that is biblically required of us is contrary to the flesh. The flesh is uncomfortable with confrontation and, in its presence, mobilizes “fight or flight” responses. Biblical principles, to the contrary, require us to stay engaged and be submissive. Here are three points from Galatians 6:1 to consider:

Ignoring the sinner is not optional. “if anyone is caught in any sin… restore such a one.” This is an imperative. We may not ignore and we may not banish, except as a last resort.
The purpose of confronting sin is restoration. “…restore such a one.” Even the Matthew passage, which terminates in possible excommunication from the church, has restoration as its ultimate purpose: The first stage of confrontation ends: “…if he listens to you, you have won your brother.” The following measures provided for are clearly intended to have the same outcome. Even when the church is forced to “let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector,” we must infer that the intent is to show the sinning Christian what he is losing by refusing to confess his sin. If and when he does so the church will begin the process of restoration that is the reverse of the process that led to his banishment. Similarly, Paul tells the Corinthian church that there is a person among them whose sin is so blatant that “I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Note that Paul’s purpose is that the person ultimately be “saved.”
You must have the right motives to be qualified to confront. “…you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.” Anger and frustration are poor motives for church reconciliation and unity. When any party in a dispute is in the “fight or flight” mode, the situation is likely to decline into a power struggle that drives a wedge between people. At that point you have a circumstance in which all parties are sinning and none of them is likely to bring the gentleness into the dispute that is needed for a spiritual solution. In the case prescribed by Paul, the spiritual quality of gentleness (Galatians 5:22-23) aligns itself with the other fruits of the Spirit to make it possible for the representatives of the church to engage with humility and patience in the process intended to bring back the person who has offended them. These qualities can only come from the Holy Spirit.

Application of the principles. These principles have a broad application to the entire life of the church. Christians sometimes defend themselves from the risk of submissive relationships by wielding truth like a weapon. We know that a basic rule of godly living is to tell the truth. (Exodus 20:16, Colossians 3:9) Thus, when we want to estrange ourselves from someone who threatens us, we feel free to tell others anything about them that is true, or to point out to them old grievances or sins, as long as they are “true.” Ephesians 4:15-16, however, reveals the entire principle of spriritual truthfulness:

…but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love. (my emphasis)

Ephesians 4:1-2 begins this discussion with the broader context: “…to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” In other words, before we can talk about speaking the truth in love, we are called to humility, which enables Christians to put others first. Finally, “[That] we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (v. 13)

Whenever we find ourselves reacting to sin within the body of believers with anger, self-righteousness, anxiety or fear, we should immediately realize that the individuals or church involved are in danger from both the sin and the reaction to the sin. We are not qualified to even start dealing with the sin until we have dealt with our reactions to it. We have to pray and submit to the Holy Spirit until we can truly say that we are ready to fight the sin but reconcile the sinner. The church can grow stronger as a result of confronting sin, when it is done in the Spirit. This is why the Bible makes it mandatory. Nevertheless, we must understand that Satan views any sin in the church as an opportunity to widen his net far beyond the person who is “caught” in the original offense. I have seen it happen, in the church I described above and in churches much closer to home.

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I was recently involved in a discussion about why God created man and why He created us with the ability to sin. These are questions that arise frequently among those who believe in God as creator, and is one that never fails to stimulate my thinking. As usual, I expressed some opinions that elicited some good responses and which gave rise to the thoughts below.

Basically I said that God created man (better: mankind) because He wanted someone to love and someone to love Him back. Further, I stated that the capacity to love entails the capacity to “not love” or to do whatever is the opposite of loving. One of the responses was, “What is your Biblical evidence for those statements?” and “Couldn’t God have created us with the ability to love him without giving us the ability to ‘not love’ Him?” These are good questions and deserve some thoughtful reflection.

Here are some things we know:

“…God is love.” (1 John 4:7-13, 16) I interpret this statement to mean that the essence of God is love. Everything about God is loving and there is nothing about God that is not loving. Whatever love is, that is God. Whatever God does is an expression of love. He has an unlimited supply of love.
God is creative by nature. We know this because God does create. Since He is also loving by nature we know that His creation is an act of love.
God is complete in Himself. He doesn’t need anything. Because of this characteristic we know that God did not create humans because he was lonely, or needed to be praised and worshiped, or needed power over something or someone.
God loves humans. (John 3:16)
Humans have always disobeyed God, even when they clearly understood what He wanted them to do. (Genesis 2:15-3:19, Romans 3:9-12)
Jesus understood His mission to be, in part, to regenerate the love of God and one another that humans had lost through their disobedience. (John 17:20-24,26)

In view of these things that we know, let’s reconsider the questions with which we began:

Why did God create humans? As far as I know there is no direct answer to this question in the Bible. However, we do know that God’s reasons for creating humans had something to do with love, and had nothing to do with anything that is “anti-love,” because God’s essence is love. We know that God’s love does not stem from His needs, because He has no needs.

This doesn’t mean that God is indifferent about his creation. Revelation 4:11 tells us that God created the universe and its inhabitants for His pleasure. Again, this is not the kind of pleasure that a needy person gets from possessions, relationships or power. This is a pleasure that can only arise out of the perfect love of God. It is a good kind of pleasure with no admixture of evil or self-serving. It is the rare kind of pleasure that humans glimpse when they share their lives with someone who unconditionally values, cares for and trusts them.

To say that God does not need someone to share His love is not to say that He cannot want to share His love with someone. In fact, sharing love without needs is to share perfect, unadulterated love. It must be noted that any attempt to understand the nature of God’s perfect love and its perfect pleasure is impossible for humans in this life; we cannot experience it as long as we live in a world and a body that are preoccupied with human needs. Nevertheless, sharing perfect love is so important to God that it is the entire focus of His creative nature. Therefore, I conclude that God created man because He has love to share, and He is aware of the incredible pleasure that comes from sharing it. In fact, I believe that He could do nothing else, given His loving and creative nature.

Why, then, did God create humans such that they could refuse His love? Before we can arrive at the answer to this question we have to understand a simple logical proposition:

God knew that if humans were given the ability to disobey Him, they might do so.
God knew that the consequences of disobeying Him were of utmost seriousness (Genesis 2:16-17).
God does not want any human to suffer those consequences. (II Peter 3:9) Thus, He did not want anyone to disobey Him.
Nonetheless, God did, in fact, created humans with the ability to disobey Him.

These observations lead me to conclude that God had some loving intent related to mankind that prevented Him from creating them with the precondition of obedience. To put it in a more direct way; God could not have created mankind to be completely obedient without violating His own nature or the nature that He wants humans to have.

What might that nature be? I believe that it is love. We concluded above that one of God’s primary objectives in the creation of mankind was to be able to relate to someone in love. God understood that, in order to be able to love, we must be able to refuse to love.

Can we force someone to love us? I think not. A powerful person may be able to force others to act like they love him, or to say that they love him. These acts and words may appear to be love, and may even be interpreted as love but… could a rational person actually feel loved if the acts and words were coerced? Perhaps God could have created us such that we always obeyed Him, always said we loved Him and always behaved consistently with the words. Maybe He could even have created humans such that they always felt loving toward Him. Could a God honest enough to be called “God” really believe that their words, actions and feelings were really love?

If you think that the answer to that question might be “yes,” consider an analogy that I paraphrase from author Gregory A. Boyd*: Imagine that you could implant a computer chip in your spouse, without his knowledge, that would make him feel, act and speak to you in a perfectly loving fashion, according to your personal understanding of what loving is like. He would even believe that he had chosen to love you, although, in truth, he could not do otherwise.

Would you find this fulfilling, or would you eventually realize that the loving words were really your own words, the words you had programmed into the computer chip? Likewise the actions and feelings would really have originated in your mind, not in the mind of your spouse. You would be living with a sophisticated puppet and no level of sophistication will replace love freely given. In order to accept love as genuine, we must know that we are dealing with a free agent, one who gives love by choice. Likewise, God made us truly free so that we could truly love Him. The ability to reject His love is a necessary counterpart of the ability to love Him.

The good news is that God’s love for us is so perfect, so unconditional and so powerful that He continues to pursue us even when we reject Him. Our small human ideas about pleasure often pull us away from His love, but He understands the pleasures of real love so profoundly that He gives everything He possesses to bring us back to it, time after time. The day is coming when Christians will have no flesh left to pull them away from God and their experience of Him will be complete. Then the significance of His grace will be fully understood, our questions will all be answered and we will enjoy Him forever.

*Satan and the Problem of Evil. Intervarsity Press, 2001, p. 55